


and if you're going, take the moon

by captainangua



Series: DeanCas shorts [14]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst and Humor, Canonical Character Death, Declarations Of Love, Feelings, First Time, Gen, Getting Together, M/M, Post-Episode: s15e09 The Trap, Sam Winchester Knows, Temporary Character Death, The Empty (Supernatural)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:07:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23446747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainangua/pseuds/captainangua
Summary: Billie gives them a way of reaching Jack in the Empty, and the Winchesters reluctantly get to work on making Cas the happiest he's ever been.
Relationships: Castiel & Jack Kline, Castiel & Sam Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Series: DeanCas shorts [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/185708
Comments: 11
Kudos: 98





	and if you're going, take the moon

**Author's Note:**

> Tisss the season to type up everything hanging out in old notebooks...
> 
> So back before Jack came back, like everybody else I wrote up something about Cas needing to go to the Empty early to work on getting him back.
> 
> ........NOW of course we know Cas can just painfully jaunt in and out of the Empty as he pleases but I didn't know that when I was noting this down originally.

Billie left, and all Dean could do was stare at Cas, who was doing everything not to look him in the eye.

“Now to figure out what makes me happy…” Cas muttered, still clutching the chain Billie had left him with. Someone with Jack’s power could apparently use it to make it out of the Empty – if some poor idiot was able to get it to him there.

But there was only one ticket into the Empty. And wasn’t it _lucky_ that Cas had already booked himself one?

“Cas…” Sam started beside him, but Dean heard himself cut in before his brother could say anything.

“A whole year?”

Now Cas looked up. “What would you have done if I’d said anything?”

Dean felt the anger rising in him fizzle out. He just didn’t have an answer to that. And all he could do was think over the last year. They’d seen Michael destroyed together – if _that_ hadn’t been enough to get Cas feeling happy, what the hell was left to them with Jack still gone and God still out to get the rest of them?

*

“I mean. The closest strip club’s a twenty minute drive away.”

Cas didn’t smile. It had been fifteen minutes since Sam had left, claiming that he had the perfect plan to bring Cas true happiness. Apparently not believing his brother, Dean had spent all of that time either generating one of the most awkward silences they’d ever shared between them, or coming up with suggestions like… well, that. Cas knew that Dean was floundering, that he was torn between fear of losing him and fear of suggesting something which might actually work but cost them their friendship, but that didn’t stop Cas from finding it frustrating to listen to.

“They’re saying the writers for Game of Thrones are actually starting to show their face at conventions again. We could get them to apologise?”

Cas did smile for that, suspecting that Dean needed to see it. Dean had, to his credit, taken Cas’s secret deal made with the Empty shockingly well – he really had been working hard on the anger issues lately – but the devastated look on his face when he’d realised that Billie and Cas were serious and, worse, right, about this being their one shot to reach Jack hadn’t left his eyes since. And when he was able to look directly at Cas, his attention remained fixed on the chain Cas now wore around his neck. The weight of it made it difficult for Cas to ignore too.

“I could call Claire and get her to admit that she sees you as a father figure.”

“That’s… a little much. And I don’t think getting people to admit something that makes them uncomfortable to soothe my own ego would make me happier. Certainly not the happiest I’ve ever been.”

“Huh, I guess.”

Cas felt a flicker of strangulated longing rush through Dean’s brain as he stared down at the bunker’s tabletop, and he that knew Dean was slowly coming to the same conclusion Cas had hours ago, a year ago. But he hadn’t been lying – the last thing he wanted to do was force someone into saying or doing something they clearly weren’t ready to.

Though he had still suggested using the Empty deal knowing full well there was one way likely to achieve the end they were working towards, so maybe his subconscious was working against him in this.

“Cas. Y’know…” Dean swallowed and Cas wanted to look away. Cas had literally watched the Tower of Babel fall and had found it less excruciating.

“Back in Purgatory. I would have said more – if we’d, y’know, had more time.”

Cas resisted the urge to thunk his head down on the table. He was starting to understand why Dean was so bad at talking about his feelings. It was a testament to how desperate they were now that Dean still hadn’t completely exploded at the thought of Cas leaving – this was literally the best reaction from him that Cas could hope for and listening to it was still more than he could bear.

This was not the way he’d hoped to have this conversation.

He wasn’t even sure he’d hoped to have the conversation at all. Neither of them seemed to have a good track record for saying the right thing at the right time, and there was so little that kept the two of them going – surely it was more important to keep preserving what they had?

“I didn’t just want to say sorry. I wanted to say -” Dean paused, looking as physically pained as Cas was feeling.

Cas took a long breath in. “Dean, it’s ok -”

“No, it’s not. See,” he met Cas’s eye now, somehow looking steadier in that than Cas thought he had in years, “I think you know that we love you. That I don’t just need you here with me, because you’re helpful, that I -”

“Dean, please -”

He’d been wrong. This wasn’t the secret to ultimate happiness - this was the absolute worst thing he’d ever endured. Maybe Dean meant what he was going to say and maybe he didn’t, but either way it clearly wasn’t something he was ready to commit to. He was just saying it to make Cas leave for the _plan_ which probably wouldn’t even work because when had Cas’s plans ever worked out?

“That I love you, Cas. Just for me, just because you’re you.”

A wave of relief too vast to be called happiness washed over him. Dean wasn’t lying, and he didn’t look disgusted or disappointed with himself. He really was saying it because he meant it and he was ready to say it.

“And I’m terrified,” Dean continued, like now he’d started it was beyond him to stop talking, “because if this works and we lose you... last time you went into that place I thought that was it and I.... I didn’t cope, man. I gave up. And I was so close to just...”

Dean looked away and Cas caught his hand before Dean could rake it back through his hair.

“Jack got me out before. I believe he can do it again,” Cas reassured him, recognising that this, and not a parroted declaration of love in response, was what Dean most needed to hear now. Dean trusted people on their actions, not their words, as he hoped people did for him. Which is why he became almost childishly confused by people taking his words seriously. 

And, moreover, Cas had long suspected that Dean knew exactly how Cas felt about him. He just hadn’t been bold enough to name it or look it in the face until now.

But just because it didn’t need to be the first thing he said didn’t mean that Cas wasn’t going to say it.

“I love you too. And even when you’re being insufferable, I think you’re incredible. I have from the first.”

“...Dork”

“A dork who, by your own admission, you love and dread to lose.”

Dean choked out a laugh that sounded halfway to developing into a sob and Cas pulled him towards him, wrapping his arms around Dean’s whole body and clinging onto his shirt, resting his head in the familiar nook on Dean’s right shoulder.

“I’m going to come back.”

Dean’s grip became a little tighter. Then he pulled away enough to look at Cas, fear swimming to surface of his eyes, and leaned in for a kiss.

The low-level buzzing of longing Cas was so used to feeling around his friend was finally quiet.

It was good. It was dangerously good, and Cas felt the anxiety over that welling up in his chest, and knew then that this probably wasn’t even going to work. Fear over it actually working was always going to get in the way.

He pulled away. “Dean -”

But Dean was there, stroking a thumb up and down Cas’s chin. “Look, if this is it? If this really has to be the thing that takes you away from me… I want to make it good, Cas. I wanna make this worth it.” Dean smiled and forced an expression that was painfully familiar to Cas. He’d slipped into survival mode, and was deep, deep in the comfort of his own denial. He would get through this happily, and then breakdown when he knew it was safe to do that. But, if this worked, Cas wouldn’t be there to help him with that. “And then even if it doesn’t work, at least we’ve still had fun, right? Since it took us this long to sort our shit out we need something to show for it.”

Mind drifting pleasantly, Cas stroked his fingertips up and down the vertebrae of Dean’s back. The Empty, if this didn’t work, was nothingness. But Cas didn’t crave that anymore. He wanted to remember everything. He’d had his memories tampered with and damaged so many times over his long life – he wanted to be sure that the ones of these moments, at least, would never be harmed.

“That makes sense,” Cas heard himself say. “But I don’t know if I’m going to be able to relax enough to make this work. I - ” he laughed, physically pained by the irony of it all. “I want to live, Dean. So, I’m stressed about dying. But I… well, I need to.”

“For Jack,” Dean finished for him, and Cas was relieved to hear no bitterness there in his voice. “And the world – as usual.” There was a little resentment at that, but that seemed fair enough. Dean had never had something good he hadn’t been forced to sacrifice.

Cas shook his head, still staring at Dean, knowing that, for once, he had permission to do so as much as he wanted. “I still can’t relax.”

“…would a blindfold help?”

*

His errand took a lot longer than Sam had thought it would, so he’d been almost a full day away from the bunker when he rushed back in.

It was hard to feel any kind of joy or triumph when succeeding would cause the death of one of the people closest to him, but Sam felt proud of what he’d thrown together at such short notice. At the very least he might succeed in killing some of the tension in the room. He might not have anything like the connection that Dean had with Cas, but he did know him, and that meant he had more than a few guesses about how to make him the happiest he’d ever been.

Of course, Sam allowed as he marched down the bunker steps, he had left him alone with the other big guess.

He and Dean might have never had any kind of Conversation about it, but he’d seen what both Dean and Cas looked like without the other. It wasn’t easy to live with. So, when he couldn’t find any trace of either of them, it only made sense to start walking to his brother’s bedroom. When his knock got no answer from Dean, he walked in.

Dean was sitting on the end of his bed, half-dressed and looking shell-shocked.

“Dean?”

Not looking up, Dean shook his head. “He’s gone.”

Sam felt something twist in his stomach, a million emotions rushing through him at once. He hadn’t said goodbye. This was what they’d wanted, what they’d needed to happen. They were supposed to be beyond dying and putting themselves at risk just to keep the world spinning, and he hated that Billie of all people had pushed them back into it. That Cas, of all people, had still thought his life dispensable enough to make the deal in the first place. That Dean looked as hollowed out as he had when they’d burned Cas’s body on a pyre. The relief that at least there was no body this time.

Sam glanced at his brother’s nightstand and saw that Dean hadn’t left his gun out before going to bed. He must have felt safe.

“Before…”Sam cleared his throat. “Before you woke up?”

Dean nodded sharply, and Sam moved to sit down beside him.

There were too many ghosts or elephants around in the room to navigate a real conversation safely, but they did talk, and eventually Dean was able to raise his head.

“I knew I had to want it to work. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to be enough. I didn’t want that put on me.” He slapped a hand down on the end of the bed, gripping the sheets for support. “Was it that easy to make him happy the whole time? Was I keeping him from that just by being a dick?”

Sam could feel his face contorting into something Dean would find insensitive. “…I mean, you would have been saving his life, if that’s true.”

Dean glared, and when he spoke again his voice was gruffer. “Well, we’ll throw him a goddamn party when he gets back. What’d you go out for anyway?”

Feeling his face burn, Sam’s eyes skidded away to the door. “Uh… Just something I thought he’d like. It’s. It’s dumb, I’ll bring them back.”

“ _Them_?”

Sam thought he understood how Dean was feeling, but he only really realised the depth of how worried, in love and broken inside his brother was when he started crying at the sight of the thirty-five guinea pigs Sam had left in their cages by the door.

“I mean, they came from a few shops so it might take some time, but I can start getting them returned today -”

“ _Don’t you dare_.”

*

“Cas?”

Cas opened his eyes, still trying to remember. After a long night of tears, joy and laughter, it had been the sight of Dean, hand still reaching for him in sleep, vulnerable as Cas had never seen him before that had done it. It was that image which Cas was still desperately trying to keep burned in his brain when he was Awakened.

Then he let himself become aware of his present.

“Jack?”

*


End file.
